For @littlestartopaz from my vast repository of prompts from her. R from this post, Steve/Bucky/Sam friendship (“This is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever had. Of course I’m in.”)
Okay, some stealth feelings about Steve being all alone in the 21st century snuck in there, but they’re real small and mostly this is very funny, I have no regrets. Timelines for the first two should be obvious, the third one is some time after they drag Bucky’s poor exhausted self out of cryo again and go fight more shit. Because Steve is a fighty shit and Bucky would never be able to let him run off alone and Sam is rapidly falling into the same black hole of stress.
“This is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever had–”
“Well, now, Buck, we both know that’s just not true,” Steve protested, half-laughing.
“The stupidest plan you’ve ever had,” Bucky repeated firmly, and knocked back the rest of his beer without breaking his scowl. “Except for that time you became a lab rat,” he allowed as he lowered his glass, “this is the stupidest.”
“So are you gonna bail on me?”
Bucky slid the glass across the bar and tapped the wood beside it, summoning the bartender as if by magic and acquiring another pint. “Of course I’m in, someone’s gotta save your ass.” He tipped his glass to Steve in a toast and sipped from it more slowly, looking over Steve’s shoulder at the table of celebrating soldiers. “I dunno about the little French one, though, Stevie, he’s a weird duck.”
“I thought you knew Dernier,” Steve said, raising his eyebrows as he slowly drank his own pint.
“Yeah, sure I know Dernier, I know all of ‘em, that’s why I’m worried,” Bucky muttered, propping his chin on one hand. “You wanna throw a bunch of misfits together and drop ‘em in the field and see what blows up? Let me tell you somethin’, Stevie, it’s gonna be a tank if Dernier’s one of ‘em.” He paused and frowned. “And apparently Jones can drive a tank now, so that might be the least of our problems. You sure you don’t wanna go back to the showgirl circuit?”
“You sure you don’t wanna go out the window?” Steve asked blandly, and Bucky barked a laugh.
“Y’know, that’s not a lot more intimidating than it was when you were ninety pounds and asthmatic. Dunno if I’m just used to it or if you were really that threatening.”
“That’s like being a wolfhound feeling threatened by one of those little…” Steve sketched a shape in the air, about the size of a bread box. “Purse dogs.” He clapped Bucky on the shoulder. “C’mon, Buck, we don’t even know if they’ll say yes yet.”
“Stupidest plan ever,” Bucky mumbled, and let Steve drag him off to the table in the corner.
***
“Wait, you want to do what?” Sam sat down at his kitchen table with a thud and started to laugh, the helpless, breathless laugh of someone in shock. “You want to do what?”
“Go get your wings,” Natasha said, drawing the words out slowly.
“Look, it’s not going to be that hard,” Steve said, drawing another line on the blueprints Nat had managed to acquire through means that he hadn’t questioned, but was confident were all shades of illegal. “See, if we go in here, between Nat and me we can–”
“Go into Fort Knox,” Sam said, leaning forward and splaying a hand flat over the blueprints. Steve stopped drawing out his plan and looked up, arching an eyebrow in surprise. “Are you two insane? No, don’t answer that, I watch the news, all you Avengers are crazy as shit, but you specifically are off your rocker, Rogers.”
“Hey,” Steve said, looking at Natasha, who had kicked her feet up on the table over Sam’s protests and was grinning lazily at them both. “Why isn’t she crazy too?”
“Because you’re in charge,” Sam half-shouted. “Oh my God, I can’t believe we survived World War II, what were you doing.” He dropped his head into his hands. “Even by those standards, though—and let me tell you a thing, man, we know all about some of the shit you pulled, we get told the story about Lichtenstein as, like, a cautionary tale.”
“Oh yeah,” Steve said, going back to the blueprints now that Sam’s hand was gone. “I remember Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein was a mess. Nat, do you think you can circumvent this alarm or–”
“But, man, even by those standards, this is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever come up with,” Sam insisted.
Steve glanced up, a flash of pain fading into a crooked smirk. “If you heard about Lichtenstein, you know that’s not true—oh, hey, are you guys still getting told about that time outside Champagne?” Sam nodded, staring at the table top as if it would explain how he had ended up here, and Steve snorted, going back to his blueprints. “I dunno, I think Champagne was a strong contender for my stupidest plan ever. Buck—uh, everyone always said so. Okay, if Nat can get these alarms and leaves the guards to me, I think you should be able to get through here—Nat, how big are these supposed to be? Hang on, I see it, okay, yeah, Sam should fit through there. So,” he said, looking back up at Sam. “Are you in or not?”
“Of course I’m in,” Sam snapped without raising his head. “If I’m going down for sheltering fugitive Captain America, I’m going down in fucking style.”
“That’s the spirit,” Steve said, and Natasha laughed, swinging her feet down to stand. She patted Sam on the shoulder and slipped past him to help herself to his refrigerator.
***
“Steven Grant Rogers, if you jump out of this plane I will murder you,” Bucky snarled, and his vibranium arm closed around the back of Steve’s uniform so sharply that the material complained. “And I hope you appreciate the fact that I am absolutely capable of that.”
Steve rolled his eyes as Bucky towed him backward from the open door and slammed it shut with his free hand. “I’m not going to jump out of the plane, Buck, I’m just trying to get a lay of the land.”
Sam meticulously checked over one of his guns and hid a smirk as he spoke. “He ever tell you about the time he jumped out of the upper stories of the Triskellion?”
“You’re a fuckin’ Benedict Arnold,” Steve said, narrowing his eyes as Bucky’s glower deepened impossibly. “I can take care of myself, Buck.”
“Yeah, so you’ve been saying since we were six, and you were wrong then and you’re wrong now. Y’know what, I walk away for five fuckin’ minutes and this shit all goes to hell.”
Sam emptied the magazine and started counting the bullets. “More like seventy years, Barnes.”
“Everyone playing nice back there, kids?” Clint’s voice asked dryly over the comms.
“Oh, fuck off,” Bucky muttered, releasing Steve and shoving knives into their sheaths with unnecessary violence. “And that’s another thing,” he said, jabbing a knife at Sam a few times before he made it vanish onto his person—Bucky could carry more weapons on his body than Steve had ever seen in his life, with the possible exception of Natasha. “None of you did shit to make sure this idiot didn’t die. I get back and he’s fuckin’ jumpin’ out of helicarriers and drownin’ himself in rivers—didn’t anyone ever teach you how to take care of stupid Brooklyn kids?”
“Bucky, for the love of God,” Steve said, rolling his eyes, and was unsurprised when he was ignored.
“I can’t run as fast as he can,” Sam said, blithe. “Not a lot I could do.”
“Yeah, well, I’m blamin’ you anyway,” Bucky said, strapping the last of his knives in place and moving briskly on to the guns.
“It’s Captain America, Barnes,” Clint said, a laugh hidden beneath the deadpan. “He doesn’t need taking care of.”
Bucky stopped and gave the plane at large a pitying sort of look. “You poor sonsabitches, you fell for it. You fell for the spiel. Let me tell you somethin’, when I say I left for five minutes, I mean five goddamn minutes. I turn my back on this little shit, last time I’m gonna see him before I go off and get my ass shot at by a bunch of dickless Nazis, and he runs off and signs up to be a guinea pig for Stark. I wasn’t even out of the city, I was a hundred yards away.”
“So compared to that, this seems like a much better plan, don’t you think?” Steve asked, grinning.
Sam’s head rose sharply for the first time, from the other gun and its magazine. “Uh, no, no it does not. Nothing involving an unstable Vision is a good plan. I mean,” he shook his head, “I’m worried about the guy, I want to save him, but I want to do it in a way that decreases my odds of fucking spontaneous combustion, you feel me? I mean, shit, anything that can take Wanda out isn’t something I want to mess with.”
“This is our only option,” Steve repeated for the hundred and thirty-second time—he’d started keeping count after twelve.
“This is the stupidest plan you’ve ever had,” Sam and Bucky chorused, Sam’s voice flat, Bucky’s half-way to a snarl again.
“By far,” Sam added.
“Without a doubt,” Bucky agreed, nodding to Sam in approval.
“So you’re in?” Steve asked, still grinning.
“Of course we’re in,” they snapped, and two magazines snapped into place.
